PDF is an initialism (versus an acronym, which is slightly different...) for "Portable Document Format", a file format created by Adobe [http://www.adobe.com/].
[CL] maintains a page
[http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.text.pdf/PDF.html]
on the subject.

While there's no [Tcl]-specific broadly-applicable PDF library as of summer 2003, PDFlib
[http://www.pdflib.com/]
supports Tcl among several other language bindings.  Notice at the heart of PDFlib's
licensing
[http://www.pdflib.com/purchase/howtobuy.html]
this summary:  "You may test and fully include our software in your projects, but you
need a valid license key to remove the 'www.pdflib.com' demo stamp on
all generated pages."

[Perl] and [Python] have much stronger PDF stories to tell (see
[http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=7822/ur0304g/], for example), and, of course,
Tcl has ways to exploit anything available through those languages, including
[Tclperl] and [Tclpython].
----
[Clif Flynt] worked on generating PDFs from Tcl.

[Lars H] has written a pure Tcl package '''writepdf''' 
(see [http://ftp.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/tclldoc/examples/] and its parent directory) 
that can generate well-formed PDF files. 
The API is roughly at the same level of abstraction as writing 
raw [postscript] with [puts], so you need to be familiar with 
the PDF specification to use it.

It would be great to have something sitting on top of writepdf which can generate correct pdf from a text widget and a canvas...It seems like this ought to be possible in pure Tcl.

----

2003-11-25 [VI]  The PDF specifications are at http://partners.adobe.com/asn/tech/pdf/specifications.jsp





While there are relatively few direct Tcl-PDF connections as
of late 2001, "pdf417_encode [http://freshmeat.net/projects/pdf417_encode/] converts ASCII strings into pdf417 [barcode]". NOTE: PDF417 barcodes have
nothing whatsoever to do with Adobe's Portable Document Format.

----
 What: TEItools
 Where: http://xtalk.price.ru/SGML/TEItools/
 Description: Collection of Tcl and other tool scripts used for
        transforming SGML documents to various other formats.  Currently
        supports HTML, LaTeX2e, RTF, PS, and PDF.  Uses CoST.
 Updated: 04/1998
 Contact: mailto:boris@xtalk.msk.su

 What:  WELD
 Where: http://www.javafoundry.com/javapdf
 Description: Web Enabled Logic Documents (WELD) make use of Jacl/Tcl to
        provide the ability to hold WWW applications together.  WELD is
        a part of JavaPDF (the open source servlet utilities project).
 Updated: 08/2001
 Contact: mailto:lhall@JavaFoundry.com (Lee T  Hall)

 What: pdflib
 Where: http://www.pdflib.com/
 Description: PDFLib is an ANSI C library for creating new PDF files.
        Bindings for a number of languages, including Tcl, are available.
        This package is not designed to access and update existing PDF
        files.
 Updated: 11/1999
 Contact: mailto:tm@muc.de




----

[Sven Sass]'s employer generates PDF by way of [Java] classes
converting [Docbook] to [FO] to PDF (!).





----






The most immediate contact between PDF and Tk probably is by way 
of [PS], the "output" format for [canvas]es.  [Clif Flynt] has "a
subset of a Tcl canvas->PDF script ... [[which]] does lines,
text, and nested canvases" in the [starkit] at
http://noucorp.com/postcard .

Another well-worn pathway involves [transforming HTML to PDF].

----
[GS] (031129) There is a simple C source code to convert text 
file in PDF at http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/vmssig/src/c/TXT2PDF.C

----
[Category Acronym] | [Category Documentation]